One thing to talk about is simply how busy the season looks. In addition to the six main stage shows, there are two bonus shows. And on top of that, the Deep End Series returns after a year off with three more plays. Add to that five youth series titles.

The theatre takes care to alleviate “pinch points” in the season, but “that said, there will be times when both the Backstage Stage and main stage will be running at the same time,” Surjik said.

The main stage plays are Art by Yasmina Reza, Quick Bright Things by Christopher Cook, Treasure Island by Ken Ludwig, Butcher by Nicolas Billon, Onegin from the Arts Club Theatre, and Pride and Prejudice adapted from Jane Austen.

Art features two friends, one of whom has purchased an expensive painting that’s all white with white stripes. The is-it-art? play was chosen with the opening of the new gallery in mind.

Treasure Island, the family Christmas selection, is billed as “a glorious adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic novel.”

Onegin is a major award-winning musical on its first tour. It’s based on the poem by Pushkin and the Tchaikovsky opera.

Guest directors include Johanna Wright, who will be in charge of Pride and Prejudice, and Kevin Williamson, who’ll helm The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui by Bertolt Brecht in the Deep End.

The Brecht play parodies the events that led to the rise of Hitler. It’s clearly the play that Surjik is most passionate about.

“For me, this is the one that most underpins some of the reasons I became a theatre artist,” he said.

Surjik will direct two plays, Quick Bright Things and Butcher.

Also in the Deep End series is Home is a Beautiful Word, a revival from Victoria’s Belfry Theatre based on some 500 interviews Saskatoon Theatre artist Joel Bernbaum did on the issue of homelessness.

Persephone will offer two bonus plays. Boom, by Rick Miller of MacHomer fame, is about the baby boom generation. Persephone calls it “stunningly staged” and “mind-blowing.” The other bonus production is Gabriel Dumont’s Wild West Show, presented by Gordon Tootoosis Nikaniwin Theatre and La Troupe du Jour, a Buffalo Bill-inspired telling of the Metis story involving 10 writers.

The 2017-18 Youth Series, meanwhile, consists of Fish Eyes, Old Man and the River, Tetris, Goodnight Moon, The Runaway Bunny and Beneath the Ice directed by Curtis Peeteetuce, which will tour to Northern communities.

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